Chapter 43

The slow shuttered images from the camera firmly taped to the dashboard caught Ari’s squinting eyes.  From road to pictures took on an eerie moment to moment torrent as swirling hair whipping back and forth across his forehead, electrified the blue sky.  Another whip back across his face and forehead, his free hand clicked more of the slow shutter blurred images.

His left hand gripped the wheel of the metallic gray Turbo Porsche as the speedometer read 80-90-105.  More slow-shutter clicks with his right hand.  The $125,000 sticker price of the “test drive” out-of-this-world ride affixed to the passenger window suddenly ripped free, jettisoning like a hasty white brush stroke in the back ground.  The Pirellis squealed and slid through the curves, spewing gravel from the soft shoulders of the switchback road descending the Malibu Mountains toward the Pacific.  Beside him on the seat was his laptop, the shots from his cabled camera sending a mosaic of images to the screen for later hard copy duplication. 

Defying gravity was what the Porsche was made to do.  The black and white behind him knew that and finally came to a screeching halt behind Ari’s joy ride.  He turned off his siren and flashing lights.  The pale white cop heaved a sigh and called for backup and a blockade at the Pacific Coast Highway… “if he makes it there.” 

No sooner had the Highway Patrolman hung up his radio mike and stepped out, and started to saunter down to the demon Porsche, Ari pulled a “stunt man” U-turn and zoomed past him going back up the mountain.  Jumping back into his cruiser, he grabbed his high tech radar gun and clocked him at 110 mph.  “FUCKING GUY IS NUTS!!”  Taking pursuit, the cop called once again. “Shine the blockade at PCH, need one at… forget it, send the coroner.  This guy is never gonna make it home.” 

For Ari, it was a different magic time.  He didn’t need to see the screen of his laptop.  He knew his “110 mph” smile was big, full and frozen.  “You’re right, Scarecrow!”

With a sudden braking and another spin of the steering wheel, Ari brought the missile to a stop, and switched off the engine. 

Through the cloud of dust and Ari’s laughter, the black and white roared to a face to face stop.  The officer jumped out and leveled his revolver at Ari whose hands were already in the air.  “This is going to be an expensive ticket, isn’t it?” quipped Ari.

“Expensive?  You’re going to jail, you crazy Mother Fucker!” yelled the officer.

***

But he didn’t. 

***

For Aristotle, it was time to get back to the reality he had been avoiding.

That’s how he wished himself.  How, at 28, he had finally resolved the anguish.  How his umbra-self imagined his redemption as he lay up to his neck in a tub of warm water, staring at the ceiling, allowing the soaking of his scrubbed and trembling hands to wash away the years of tainted exploitation images his fingers and his Nikon had imposed on his soul. celebrity photos that millions of brain-dead readers consumed and digested daily… photos he was obscenely paid to take... photos that continued to remind his soul of its self-deceit.  He closed his eyes and revisited the prelude of his dream one last time…  this dream… it had only been a couple of hours ago, hadn’t it?  How long had he been in this volume of hot water?  How long had he been imagining what might be?

Aristotle stood with outstretched arms and wept... wept loud and primal. 

Only the ocean breakers cascading against the frozen remains of jagged volcanic stone could cry out as loud.  He stood high above the roar on a shelf of rock jutting out above the rage like a tongue of relentless defiance against the elements that reached up to drown and then erode even this outcrop of resistance.  Below, washing forward and back with the tide were the crumbled remains of nature’s battle lost.  Where he stood, all was safe… for the time being.

To his right and left stood metal stands holding reflector boards.  The sun was about to set, casting crossed swords of golden light across his naked body. It was as he wished it… a final exposure for a being now covered with the salty mist of nature’s preservative and nature’s destroyer.

Before him on titanium legs, the shutter of his digital camera continued opening and closing to its pre-set pattern, capturing forever the last chapter of a life he had chosen to leave behind.

His face was that of a young man turned old and frail from the experiences that had driven him to this spot, this moment in time, this completion.  He opened his eyes and peered about him as tears merged with nature’s cleansing.  Photos of a less than proud past rolled before him.  Images, he thought, of truth and imagination are out there for me; waiting for my camera, my easel, waiting to be captured, to be layered by my paintbrush, to be consumed, retched, and reborn by my eyes, my voice.

He arched his back to the sky, perhaps imploring the infinite to speak to him, comfort him, relieve him of the past.  No such message came. 

The only shroud of comfort came by way of cooling shadows from the shrouding wings of a raven soaring in frozen animation above the breaker’s updraft.  Ari opened his eyes.

The anguish in his face relaxed.

The raven blinked.

It was time.

The water’s warmth was replaced by the chill of fear.  He knew the self-inflicted torture might never go away.  He opened his eyes.

 A soapy blink of reality.  A last reminder.  Yes, he was only 28.  Yet, now he fully realized it was time.  Time to see how imaginary his dreams were.  How precious his own life.  How real the illusory.  How illusory the real.  Time to listen to the silhouette that remained perched on the open window. 

He inhaled one last time on the Gauloises that clung stubbornly to his dried lips.  The smoke rose, drifted toward the window and became one with the accepting sky behind

His hand reached over to the tripod and camera pointed toward the window.  Click.  Click.

                                          Caw…  Caw.

the raven.  Oh, if only this dream of revelation might come true.

     Fin

Postlude

“And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon''s that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o''er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted~nevermore!”

                                                                  Poe